New restaurant adds to growing choice of Olive Branch eateries

Oct. 24, 2013 - Mike Warren serves up vegetable soup and chili at the recently opened The Green Plate in Olive Branch. After being diagnosed with high blood pressure and diabetes, the 49-year-old Warren opened a niche restaurant that helped him lose weight and caters to patrons with similar goals. The menu targets the health-conscious while maintaining taste. “It’s healthier food with a Southern style,” adds Warren. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal)

Oct. 24, 2013 - For the health-conscious, at least eight veggies and three entrees are served up daily at The Green Plate. Located at 9229 Miss. 178 in The Olive Branch, the restaurant provides a wholesome alternative dining experience. (Stan Carroll/The Commercial Appeal)

Diagnosed with diabetes and high blood pressure, 49-year-old Mike Warren opened a niche restaurant that helped him lose weight and caters to others who want to do the same.

"My sugar has dropped about 30 points, and I've lost about 20 pounds," said Warren, referencing a six-week span.

Warren bills his new restaurant in Olive Branch, The Green Plate, as a "low-fat, low-salt and low sugar" establishment that also will delight the taste buds.

It targets the health-conscious but easily crosses over to appeal to people who want any kind of tasty food. Warren calls it "healthier food with a Southern style."

Instead of adding salt and sugar to season food, he and his wife, Cindy, who has waitressing experience, and their daughter, Jennifer, who is in cooking school in Memphis, use things like rosemary, bouillon, garlic, onions, parsley and celery.

To avoid preservatives, they buy only fresh or freshly frozen ingredients and dry beans they cook themselves. They use only olive oil, not vegetable oil.

"It's very well flavored," said Vickie Meador, 56, who works at an Olive Branch day spa near the restaurant. "You would not know you're eating healthy."

"I've lost five pounds in a month," said Ben McLean, 64, whose diabetic wife lost double the figure. "It's amazing what good food will do for you."

Each of the seven days the restaurant is open, three entrees are prepared. Offerings include chicken potpie, spaghetti and meatballs, lemon pepper fish, balsamic chicken and hamburger steak with gravy and rice. A typical meal costs $6-$7.

The restaurant at 9229 Miss. 178 seats about 20 people in homemade picnic tables with room to expand. Each evening, the next day's menu is posted on Facebook.

The field might seem to be getting crowded for Old Towne restaurants.

Wray's Fins & Feathers opened in 2007. Four years later, Galvin Mah opened a restaurant, now called Evans Café, which caters to a price-conscious buffet crowd. The following year, his son, Jonathan Mah, opened Sidestreet Burgers.

Galvin Mah, or "Uncle Gavin", is a family friend of the Warrens. Mah wanted to open another restaurant, and Warren had the healthy concept. By serving food geared toward the health conscious, they don't compete with one another.

Startup was inexpensive using Mah's concept that avoids buying thousands and thousands of dollars in the typical restaurant equipment. The Warrens use crockpots like Mah and toaster ovens. They use a steam table to keep food warm.

"Olive Branch is really a growing city," said Warren, a former Horn Lake alderman who worked in the hardware business before opening the restaurant. "It's a population that can support a restaurant like this."

Warren is already thinking ahead.

"I'd like to have one of these in Collierville in five years," he said. "You could put one of these in every little town."